If you have even tried to start a business, or progress in a career, you would have by now realised that there is no true ‘Work-Life Balance’.

I’ve spent a considerable time learning about some of the top entrepreneurs (Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates and many others), and the common theme is that they work a lot more than is given credit for.

Most people trying to build their online business come into it with the dream of the lifestyle business.

Now, I’m NOT saying that there aren’t lifestyle benefits, if you know how to Engineer Your Business,

Yet,

It doesn’t happen overnight.

If you watch the documentary about Bill Gates’ early days, he hardly ever slept, and when he did, it was under the desk in his office.

I’ve heard fairly similar stories about Steve Jobs as well.

Then where do we get this delusion of being able to just spend a few minutes a day to make tens of thousands of dollars a month?

Look, I’m not saying you’re stupid

I fell for the same crap

I was willing to ‘suspend reality’ for a while, till my real world experience of working with real businesses made me realise

‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’

There will come a time when you can spend a few minutes a day on the business and make a truck load of money

But

That day will come after months, if not years of hard work initially

Yes, I said the BAD word – HARD WORK

It takes HARD WORK to learn the various skills required to build a business

You are going to work the 60 – 100 hr weeks (especially if you are doing this part time as you’ll be working 40hrs at the day job)

So

Suck it up, harden up and get on with it

Do something that you will love and enjoy spending those 60+ hour weeks on

I’m sure that you realise that to achieve any goal in life, there needs to occur a change in us.

But, the biggest issue I see around me, and what I personally fell for was the need to massive change.

Now, I’m not discounting the NEED for massive change, but what I’ve realised that ANY massive change has to start with the FIRST STEP.

So, lets say you want to lose 20 pounds.

You did not put on the 20 extra pounds overnight, so if you don’t have your head in the clouds, you will realise that it is going to take time.

Now, if we aim to lose those 20 pounds, in an of itself, it feels like a huge task.

But, if we can break that down to 1 pound a week for 20 weeks, that makes it easy. (at least mentally)

Now to lose that 20 pounds, you can’t just go about doing what you are doing now.

It’s your daily habits that got you there in the first place.

So, start with a tiny habit.

This could be going from having 2 sugars in your coffee to 1 sugar in your coffee for a week or two, before going down to half a sugar for the next couple of weeks, and then down to having no sugar in your coffee.

While doing that, you can start with 5 – 10 minutes of exercise in your own house, every day, just to build that habit up.

Step by step, as you keep building on it, these habits grow and lead to rituals in your daily life that help you reach your goals.

Now, it’s the same with reaching your financial/business goals.

Lets say you’re starting an information marketing business.

A lot of people have been sold this dream of the ‘Internet Lifestyle’, where you lay on the couch all day, press a few buttons and money pops out of your computer screens.

Makes me laugh how we in out ‘Lottery’ mentality, fall for it.

To start any business, be it online or offline, will take time and effort, if you are not in it for the long haul, there is no point starting.

Now, there is the chance that even with all realistic thinking, you still have the goal to hit $100k (seems like the magic mark for most people starting out), but if you look at the goal in an isolated manner, it will overwhelm you and you will not take any action towards it.

Trust me, I’m telling you this from personal experience and from the experience of others who I trust.

Now, the trick to hitting that $100K year, is to have your first $1 day.

Yeah, have your first $1 day, where you make a profit of $1, from there, aim for the $10 day, then the $100 day and so on and so forth.

There is nothing wrong in having the big goals, but break them down into milestones that you can ‘see’ in you mind’s eye.

This not only relieves the stress, but also gives you small wins under your belt, and helps you create tiny habits that get you the results.

When I started doing this, I started making progress. Till then I was stuck in ‘overwhelm-land’.

When you amplify the habit that helped you get to the $1, and $10 and $100 day, you can scale up.

Lets say that creating a traffic campaign to an affiliate offer, gives you the first $1 profit day, by amplifying (increasing) the amount of money you invest into buying traffic, and assuming that the offer converts at a fairly consistent rate, you can amplify your returns, and increase your profits as well.

Lets say that you are doing one video a day (rather than having a goal to do 10 or 20 a day, when you are starting out) to bring traffic to your offer, you can build on the little habit (of creating a video a day), and amplify it to amplify your results.

So, if you are struggling with procrastination,

Try this strategy starting today.

Do one small thing that takes you closer to your goals.

It can be any goal, physical, mental, spiritual, relationship, career.

Just take that small step forward.

Keep doing that small step till it becomes a habit, and then add step number 2, and once that becomes a habit, add step number 3.

Yes, it may be a slow path,

But,

Slow and consistent is much better than prolific and sporadic.

If you liked this article and have got some ideas on why you may be struggling with procrastination, and how this will help you,

Do let me know by leaving me a comment below, and of course, if you think this will help others in your life, please do click on the share buttons below to share it on your favourite social network.

In fact, its something that I’ve been obsessed with for many years in life.

Even from a very early age, I couldn’t reconcile with the common accepted ‘wisdom’ that we’re born, grow, get some education, spend a huge part of our life working 5 days a week to try and enjoy the weekend and holidays.

I just couldn’t think of wasting a huge part of my life doing something that I wouldn’t enjoy.

But like a ‘normal’ person, I tried to live to that expectation and did the studying, got the job and was going ok for a while.

But that ‘itch’ that, there has to be a better way, was always there.

Finally I decided that my brain would explode if I didn’t find the answer to this important question.

What am I truely here for?

As a Christian, I believe that God created each one of us uniquely, yet in His image, so that we can contribute to making this world and the lives of our fellow creations, better.

I’ve always had the philosophy of leaving anything in a better state that when I found it.

For a long time, business and entrepreneurship have been tugging at my heart, and soul.

I see entrepreneurship as an opportunity to change the world for the better by giving people who work for me a vision and a reason to be their best self.

To want to contribute and make this world a better place.

I also see that, quality, targeted information, presented in a way that will help the average person achieve their goals and dreams, as an agent for change.

For me, at a basic level Information Marketing is a life changer.

As an entrepreneur, I will jump from one thing to the next, and coming to terms with that is a big deal.

Being able to do what you love and be paid handsomely for it, is the dream come true.

Being able to use God given gifts and talents, to help better other peoples lives is a gift.

I’m glad that we live in an age where this is much easier to achieve than any other period in human history.

Have you found your true calling? Have you got a plan in place to live that calling and serve your fellow humans?

I’ve been working on many other projects, but think what I have to share today will be useful and relevant to you, if you’re an entrepreneur.

Look, us entrepreneurs are really ‘the crazy ones’.

We are ‘mis-fits’ of society.

We never do things ‘the way they’re meant to be’

Because we create our own way.

We can take courses, learn from other peoples’ ‘Blueprints’ but at the end of the day, we forge our own way forward.

We don’t expect things to be handed to us on a ‘silver platter’, rather we go about creating that ‘silver platter’ that others envy.

But some of the ideas that lead to the ‘silver platter’ can be foolish.

To the outside world, most of our ideas, dreams and visons are ‘foolish’.

But in our heads, we can ‘see’ why the world needs what we are creating, and how it will change humanity (or at least our ‘audience’ who we serve).

Although I’m not an Apple fan, I watched the late Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement speech.

At the end of the speech, he recalls the sign off used by the people who wrote the ‘Whole Earth Catalogue’ – ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’.

It’s the source of every entrepreneurs’ greatness.

Unless you are hungry, you will never succeed.

And, unless you are foolish (at least in the world’s eye), you are never going to innovate.

Now, that brings me to a real life story, where I was made to look foolish, was shamed, and stopped me from ‘opening myself’ and my ideas to the outside world.

When I was at university, although I didn’t enjoy it, I tried hard to ‘make lemonade, with lemons’ that life had handed me.

You see, coming from an Indian background, and living in India at that time meant that I had to depend on my parents for funding and had to do what they wanted me to do.

This landed me in an engineering college, doing electronics engineering (one of the last things that I would have ever wanted to do).

I was the worst student in the whole year, and had a LOT of backlog papers.

One day while thinking (yes I do a lot of that fortunately or unfortunately :P), I was thinking, ‘my cell phone runs out of charge quickly, and cell phone waves/signals are electrical waves anyway, so is there a way to pass a low current through that, to reduce battery depletion (this was in 2004/05).’ I took this idea to a professor that I though might listen to it and maybe help refine the idea.

I went up to him and told him about my idea (now the only reason I couldn’t ‘prove’ that this was possible, was because I was not good at math, and couldn’t create the equations proving my idea – I probably should have tried to team up with someone who was good with that).

He called all the staff on the electronics department and shamed me right in front of them, a little bit that I can remember goes like this ‘This idiot, thinks that electricity can be passed though air, without electrocuting people and charge a phone battery’.

Yes, my idea was very ‘raw’.

I was hurt, and felt stupid, like I have many times in life for expressing what I truely felt. (my dad was an expert in making me feel stupid, but that’s another story for another day).

I was teased by various teachers over the next few months about this.

Then about 6 – 12 months later, I was reading an electronics journal (might have been the IEEE journal), where a team of 4 students at Harvard university (or was it Stanford), had managed to pass electricity, through air, and charge a device 4 feet away.

I broke down and cried.

Although my idea might have been ‘foolish’, here was a ‘polished draft’ being proven that it could be done.

The wireless phone chargers that you now see in the market are based on this idea.

Someone had the ‘atrocity’ to go ahead and ‘do it’.

Where as I got shot down, and stopped myself from even thinking of making it happen.

Now that I have learnt so much about entrepreneurship and of successful entrepreneurs, I realise that we need to move ahead and test our ideas, and look at various ways to make it happen, regardless of it ‘seeming foolish’ to people around us.

Today, if you’ve got an idea that may seem ‘foolish’, there is a good chance that it is a great idea, that just needs refining and executing.

If you are worried about other people’s opinion, you’ll never get anything done creatively.

Now, this is your chance to be ‘foolish’ in the eyes of the world, and go create something that will change people’s lives.

I’ve now stopped (to a large extent) worrying about how my ideas are perceived, I try to get them done, and then polish as I go forward.

It could be an online business, it could be an offline business, it could be an invention, it could be a song that you want to write, or a painting that you want to paint.

Just do it.

Most ideas, inventions, businesses, and art, that we consider ‘great’ now, was once scoffed by someone.

If you are afraid to put out your ‘foolish’ ideas publicly (as in a blog), have a private notebook to write them down, and how you plan to execute it.

Once you have a few ideas, look at which ones have market demand, and then of the ones that have market demand, which one can you bring to market first?

Just create it, bring it to market, test it.

You could even test the demand for the product or idea by running surveys or selling the product before it’s created (to take out risk, and the fear of failing).

Test the ideas, and make it happen my friend, there are too many problems there to be solved, but not many of us out there to create the solutions.

So take the first step, be foolish, and succeed. 🙂

Success happens when you allow yourself to fail, get up and try again, and again, having learnt from each previous experience.

Take away any attachment (emotional or otherwise) to the outcome, and just get it done.

All the best, and I hope to see your ‘foolish’ idea, change the world.

That’s what entrepreneurship is all about, changing the world for the better. 😉

If you’ve had experiences where your seemingly ‘foolish’ idea was brought to market (by you or someone else), do share them, I’d love to know about it.

If you’ve enjoyed this, do leave me a comment, and maybe I can write more ‘raw’ stuff like this – straight from the heart. 🙂

You are probably wondering why the rich seem to get richer, and the poor seem to get poorer.

This is a question I’ve had for years.

It just seemed so unfair, but my realisation is probably going to shock you.

I’ve been going to some seminars that involved groups of committed entrepreneurs.

I’ve also been investing a lot in personal development and skills development in some minor way for about 10 years, and in a major way for about 18 – 24 months.

The conclusion I have come to, and I think some top entrepreneurs and successful people would probably to some degree agree that it all comes down to this one factor.

So what is that ONE FACTOR?

Well, stay with me. 🙂

I noticed that every time I was other other entrepreneurs and people who are successful in one or more areas of their lives, there is a buzz around them.

They just seem to have a boundless energy about them.

So I did a bit of research, and then hear of this from Wilson Luna, while I was at his recent event in Melbourne.

He confirmed the things that I knew somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind and heart.

The fact that ‘lottery winners lose everything in a short time and end up worse off in most cases’, was one of the things that I’ve always been intrigued about and had some ideas on why that may be.

Also anyone who follows that lottery mentality with business, fitness, or for that matter anything, meets with failure at some point or another.

The thing that Wilson also mentioned, that I agree with is, the fact that if you put someone who hasn’t put in the back ground work, at the helm of a successful business, there is a good chance that he or she will fail (and with them, the business – which is why I find conversations by people around me that they [who haven’t invested in growth] would be better managers than their managers and better than person X, intriguing).

Why do all these things happen?

It all seems to point to one thing, the persons level of conciousness.

When researching about conciousness and the levels of it, I came across a summary of Dr. David Hawkins’ book called Power vs Force, and a chart from it.

If you do a Google search, you should be able to find that. I’m not sure of the copyright behind it, so I’m not posting it here.

It shows the various levels of conciousness and how it affects the way we think and act.

It was an interesting summary and I will be reading the whole book at some stage to learn his exact perspective on the matter.

When I traced back my journey of fat loss, and how I finally succeeded, I could see clearly how I had moved from one phase to another.

Since I had moved fairly high, it has also brought my conciousness in other areas higher than would have been otherwise.

As we grow in conciousness, we seek to learn more about ourselves, our purpose, and to use our time effectively to achieve that God-given purpose.

Yes, as a Christian, I believe that God created us in His image, and has a unique purpose for each one of us.

As we grow in relationship with Him, and invest in our personal development, we also come to understand what our purpose may be.

As I said in a previous post, personal growth is hard.

Don’t get me wrong, although it was very very hard, if it meant that I’d reach the place where I am today, I’d be happy to do it all over again. Although when I was going through most of it, I just wanted out.

Do check out the summary, and see where you may be at. It takes a lot of momentum to move from one level to the next, but getting around the right people, and investing in yourself will short cut the process. This may be by getting a mentor who has achieved what you want to achieve, or a coach who can help, support and guide you.

Always keep working on growing. Have a huge dream that stretches you beyond what you’ve ever been stretched.

You will enjoy the benefits of it all.

Now, if you’ve read this far, you’re wondering what all this has to do with the rich and the poor (not just financially, but also in fitness, health, spiritually and otherwise)?

Well, you’ve probably heard of the fact that rich and successful people have libraries of books, where the poor have a TV that they spend a lot of their free time in front of.

The rich, or even people who end up being successful, regardless of where they start, invest in lifelong learning and growth, where as the ones who become and/or stay poor waste their time on things that don’t add value to their lives in a positive manner (growth). As a consequence of all this, their conciousness remains low. It’s sad, but true.

What are the ways to awaken the conciousness? I still haven’t really figured that out, but I believe in my case, I believe it was adversity and the fact that I didn’t want to remain where I was (ie. I didn’t want to remain fat, in the past, and don’t want to remain where I am financially, now)